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misterpessimistic: Can you lay out, logically with premises and all, your take on how religion provides the best system for an ethical system?

I'll try to remember tonight to type it up in a systematic fashion and post it tomorrow. I don't think I'm going to have time to present the argument in its best form right now, as I have to log off in a moment.

I don't want to qualify the question just a little, though. I'm not claiming that religion provides the best basis for an ethical system. I'm claiming that naturalism is likely incapable of providing that basis. Which is tantemount to saying that religion provides the only basis for ethics. I'll get into the details in my next post.

Okay, Mr. P (and anyone else who's interested), I've written out the full explanation for why I believe that religion may be the only workable foundation for ethics. I posted in the religion/philosophy forum, a) because I don't want to drag this thread too far afield and b) in case it might be of interest to anyone not reading the book. You can access that thread here.

JulianTheApostate: I read a philosophy book every year or two, and get something out of them, but I generally concentrate on other topics that tend to be more rewarding.

The importance of philosophy is mostly a matter of context. If you know the sort of questions that prompt a philosophical argument, and if those questions are important to you, then the practice of philosophy may be more rewarding. For example, for the last several years, I've been interested in science as a field of knowledge. Studying that topic has brought me to a lot of questions about the nature of knowledge in general. And because my interest in science has made those questions pertinent to me, reading epistemology has suddenly become more rewarding than it might have been before.

As a follow-up, what's the value of ethical philosophy? Its value is less clear to me than that of general philosophy, since my ethical beliefs are based on my gut reaction instead of contemplation.

I address this a little in the essay I linked to at the top of this post. There, I draw a dinstinction between morality and ethics. If you agree with my scheme, then the gut reactions you have as to what is right and wrong would more rightly qualify as morality. The application of logic to that morality, and the attempt to reason from the premises provided by your gut to conclusions that are more sophisticated or complex would be ethical philosophy.

Since I'm an atheist and believe that my ethical principles have merit, the book didn't seem that exciting.

I think your ethical principles have merit as well. But I think they're probably like most modern ethical principles, derived from a morality which is founded (uncritically) on several thousands of years of religious development.